Bad policies. Bad process. Bad politics. Those are the three acts in a Greek tragedy that tell the tale of how, in the span of a single generation, the most prosperous and golden state in the nation became an economic basket case.

When my parents came to California in the 1960’s looking for a better future, they found it here. The state government consumed about half of what it does today after adjusting for both inflation and population. HALF. We had the finest highway system in the world and the finest public school system in the country. California offered a FREE university education to every Californian who wanted one. We produced water and electricity so cheaply that some communities didn’t bother to meter the stuff. Our unemployment rate consistently ran well below the national rate and our diversified economy was nearly recession-proof.

One thing – and one thing only – changed in those years: public policy. The political Left gradually gained dominance over California’s government and has imposed a disastrous agenda of radical and retrograde policies that have destroyed the quality of life that Californians once took for granted.

...(T)he EPA's Inspector General (IG) released a report in September 2011, finding that EPA did not meet applicable federal Information (or Data) Quality Act (IQA) standards when developing the TSD. The IG argued that the TSD is a "highly influential scientific assessment," and therefore should have been subjected to the most rigorous form of peer review. EPA fell short of the mark by not publishing the comments of the agency's 12-member peer-review panel, and by placing an EPA employee on the panel, compromising its independence.

EPA claims it met all IQA standards because the TSD, far from being a "highly influential scientific assessment," is not a "scientific assessment" at all. According to EPA, the TSD did not involve any weighing of data, information, or studies. Rather, the TSD simply summarizes assessments of other authorities, principally the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the US National Academy's National Research Council (NRC), and the US Global Change Research Program (USGCRP). [Note that neither NRC and USGCRP are "independent;" both reports are based on the IPCC, whose own Assessment has been compromised by the revelations of the Climategate e-mails.]

But in so saying, EPA may have leapt from the frying pan into the fire, because in the ongoing litigation over EPA's greenhouse gas regulations, a key claim made by the petitioners Coalition for Responsible Regulation is that when EPA developed its TSD and associated EF, it unlawfully outsourced its "judgment" to the IPCC and other non-agency experts.... Read The Rest.

Congress isn't getting a glimpse of what's on President Barack Obama's Blackberry - or any more internal White House communications related to the bankrupt solar company Solyndra, which received a $535 million loan guarantee from the federal government.

Speaking to CNBC earlier Friday, White House chief of staff Bill Daley signaled that the GOP probably wouldn’t succeed in its request for Obama’s BlackBerry messages.

“One of the things you're seeing in the last number of years in this town is an enormous amount of requests for things, seems to take up a lot of people's times,” he said, according to an unofficial CNBC transcript. “I think it's a lot of politically motivated requests. But there's been a long history of White House communications being protected … from a lot of the legislative requests.”

From Andrew Breitbart: “These are the same types of groups, the anti-WTO crowd that in 1999 attacked Seattle, attacked Starbucks, threw trashcans through the windows of Starbucks. This is the same group of people that created ‘Camp Casey’ at President Bush’s compound or house in Crawford, Texas… The anti-war movement has now been co-opted as a means to divert attention away from the Tea Party and on to an organization that shifts the blame from the government forgiving these out-of-control loans to their political cronies to the banks — many of which took the bailouts. It is a sleight of hand for the benefit of the Democratic Party and for the benefit of President Obama to change the onus away from the government policies that created our failed economic system.”

Minus suspected fakes, then Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama likely fell short of the number of signatures needed to appear on the 2008 Indiana primary ballot, and it's possible his opponent, Hillary Clinton, did as well, according to information obtained by The Tribune as part of an investigation into suspected ballot petition fraud....

Dozens of people whose signatures appear on the Clinton petition have told The Tribune they did not sign the document, and Erich Speckin, a forensic document analyst hired by the paper and Howey Politics identified at least 19 suspected fake Obama petition pages.

Those Obama pages account for more than 100 signatures, meaning, minus the fakes, the former senator likely would not have qualified for ballot placement in the state....

There is no evidence Clinton or Obama knew about the fake signatures. Voter registration offices across the state certified both candidates' petitions, as did the Election Division.

Both of Indiana's Republican and Democratic Party chairmen have called for a federal investigation into the forged names that appeared on petitions from the 2nd Congressional District, which contains St. Joseph County. Among the dozens of names so far discovered to be fake are former Indiana Democratic Gov. Joe Kernan.

Kernan told the South Bend Tribune last week that neither the print version of his name nor the signature that appear on the suspect document are anything like his own.

Yet, his and other names were approved by the county voter registration office with the use of a rubber stamp in place of a signature by the Republican member of the office.

The Tribune reported that the St. Joseph County voter registration office has a Democratic and Republican member who sign off on petition pages submitted for review. However, Republican Linda Silcott was out of the office on bereavement leave on the days the suspected fakes passed through her office.

Silcott's stamped signature is used on the suspect pages while Democrat Pam Brunette signed off on the petitions in her own hand. The Tribune reported that Silcott's deputy, Mary Carrol Ringler, has authority to use the stamp, but she does not recall if she did so, in part because the dates of the forged petitions coincide with her first two weeks in her post.

On Friday Indiana Republican Party Chairman Eric Holcomb submitted a request for a federal probe to be conducted by the Department of Justice.

One reason why the Obama administration has been reluctant to officially shut down the program is that it was one of the main accounting gimmicks they used during the health care debate. Because the CLASS Act was supposed to collect five years of premiums before paying out any benefits, the Democrats have been claim $80 billion in short-term surplus from the program as deficit reduction, ignoring the obvious fact that the money would eventually have to pay for benefits. It’s been called a “budget zombie.”

◼ Washington (Oct)House Speaker John Boehner (R-OH) released the following statement after bipartisan majorities in the House of Representatives passed three long-delayed trade agreements with the nations of Colombia, Panama, and South Korea. These pacts are an important element of the GOP Plan for America’s Job Creators:

“With passage in the House and Senate today, a key component of the Republican jobs plan will be sent to the President for his signature. These significant trade pacts will provide new opportunities for American small businesses, farmers, and manufacturers to expand and hire more workers. And frankly, it shouldn’t have taken this long for it to happen. While a Democrat-controlled House sat idle, other nations expanded their trading ties, and American competitiveness suffered. These common-sense agreements reverse that trend, level the playing field, and provide American job creators access to new customers and markets to sell their products.

“While this action means new jobs for the American people, more work must be done to achieve the level of private sector job growth America needs. And these bills represent the type of permanent reform that must be our focus. Americans are struggling with the results of a failed, short-sighted ‘stimulus’ approach. To encourage robust and lasting private sector job growth we must listen to job creators and break down the government barriers that discourage investment in America.

“These job-creating bills show that, despite our differences, there is meaningful common ground among the two parties in Washington. To put Americans back to work we must continue seeking out those areas in which we agree, rather than picking fights over those where we don’t. For seeing these agreements through to the end, I want to thank President Obama, former President Bush, Chairman Camp, Chairman Brady, Chairman Dreier, and all the members of Congress who have worked in good faith to ensure they become law.”

But the debates have revealed a different problem. The Rick Perry who has taken the stage in four Republican debates so far is a man who, for all his governing success in Texas, appears not to have thought enough about why he wants to be president of the United States and what he would do if he achieved his goal. When critics gently say that Perry's presentations have been "light on details," they're really saying Perry doesn't seem to have thought things through.

More than anything else, a lot of thinking should precede a run for president. There's no time to think about much of anything once the campaign begins, and there's no way a candidate can collect and organize a lifetime of experiences into a coherent approach to national issues once he's flying from stop to stop. A candidate has to have done his thinking long before he hits the road or steps on a debate stage.

CNN compares Holder's testimony to what President Obama said in MARCH to CNN Espanol about the operation. "I heard on the news about this story that -- Fast and Furious, where allegedly guns were being run into Mexico, and ATF knew about it, but didn't apprehend those who had sent it."

CBS’ Sharyl Attkisson... reporting that the ATF let thousands of grenades cross the border into Mexico at roughly the same time the Mexican drug cartels were using grenades to blow up a casino and kill dozens of people.

In keeping with the new media notion of crowdsourcing–enthusiastically embraced by the mainstream media when trawling through Sarah Palin’s emails–Big Government will be providing readers later today with links to a document drop consisting of thousands of emails.

The email archive, created by a private cyber security researcher, appears to contain messages shared by the left’s anarcho-socialist activists during the strategic and daily tactical planning of the “Occupy Wall Street” and broader “Occupy” campaign this fall.

Big Government received a tip about the existence of the archive, and we were able to contact the individual who compiled and posted it. He will describe the archive, and how he obtained the emails, later this morning exclusively on Big Government.
Through “crowdsourcing,” the media and the public will then be able to discover the truth behind the “Occupy” movement.

"...Then, at the end of August, we were alerted by a fellow researcher that information about USDoR (U.S. Day of Rage, to which Occupy Wall Street is connected) had been posted on Shamuk and Al-Jahad, two Al-Qaeda recruitment sites. We began to take the “Occupy” protest more seriously, and dedicated more time to research and monitoring.

Days later, Anonymous announced that it would be releasing its new DDOS (Distributed Denial of Service) tool. Because of the Al-Qaeda posting, we contacted the New York Field Office of the FBI so they could investigate the potential threat. From that point on, we decided we needed to include the Human Element of Intelligence (HUMINT), and to infiltrate the protestors to map their ties to Anonymous, and to the postings on Shamuk and Al-Jahad....

Additionally, the emails reveal the many failed efforts of the hacker collective Anonymous. If those efforts had succeeded, they may have damaged the global economy.

Some examples are:
◼ #opLightHouse (FAILED) using NYC Subways to create FlashMobs and havoc through the city on Sept 17, 2011: see http://privatepaste.com/download/267076bdbc/operationLH-updateUno
◼ #RefRef Denial of Service tool release (FAILED) was designed to crash banks and NYSE, but the tool was never released: see http://www.geekosystem.com/anon-to-launch-new-weapon/; http://www.iss.net/threats/434.html
September 20th FAILED attacks against NYSE, NYPD, NYC.GOV, NYPD Retirees, Federal Reserve: see http://www.slideshare.net/robinsage/anonymous-occupy-wall-street-attacks
◼ #DayOfVengence (Sept 27th) (FAILED) because FBI arrested the operation leader CommanderX prior to the attack: http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-31727_162-20110912-10391695.html

We are sharing the email archive because we believe the public needs to know the hidden agendas behind the Occupation–the socialist, anarchist, and other agendas that have not been reported in the mainstream media."

OWS vow they are after the 1% of the population that is uber rich. But their real job is to cow the middle class. They are not after Daddy Warbucks types like Warren Buffet, they are after you....

When OWS first assembled in the public square on Sept. 17, they deliberately presented a face of vague mission and even more vague intent. They showed themselves to a largely uninterested mainstream media conducting collective Yoga and face-painting activity.

Within weeks they had fanned out to 26 other cities on an add-to list.

Now some protesters openly admit that violence will be necessary to achieve their goals.

What do you do if you can’t run on your record — on 9 percent unemployment, stagnant growth and ruinous deficits as far as the eye can see? How to run when you are asked whether Americans are better off than they were four years ago and you are compelled to answer no?

...Bill Clinton had welfare reform. George W. Bush had No Child Left Behind. Obama, in contrast, pursued a liberalism both bold and uncreative -- a massive Keynesian stimulus, a brand new health entitlement, the largest deficits in American history. Congressional Republicans were obstructionists -- but often because Obama's aggressive ideological power play made obstructionism identical with Republicanism.

GOP members could not accept an ambitious expansion of the size and role of government without surrendering their identity. Some in the GOP have enjoyed their role in opposition too much. But they were given few incentives to temper it.

The public response ran in parallel -- a tea party revolt and a near landslide Republican midterm election. Liberal accusations that this reaction was artificial, irrational or race-based only fed the polarization. In typical fashion, many offended conservatives have also engaged in ideological overreach, calling for a government cut to the size of an 18th-century agrarian republic.

Feeling provoked himself, Obama has now abandoned the pretense of post-partisanship. He runs for re-election on the platform of funding unreformed entitlements with higher taxes on the wealthy. It is hard to imagine a more typical, tired, polarizing Democratic message. It is a surrender to predictable national division....Read the rest.

The “man with no past” and a Hollywood veneer turned out to be a perfect candidate. “Sizzle” rather than substance was sold. Little was known about Obama and his past, allowing David Axelrod to market the political equivalent of a Rorschach blot.

Voters saw in Obama whatever they desired in a candidate. To some, Obama was a breath of fresh air, a man of principles. To others he was an outsider, not a crass politician. Others saw him as a chance to prove that they were not racists. Still others saw him as the reincarnation of Roosevelt or whomever else they admired.

His election depended on him remaining a blank upon which people could project whatever image they wanted. To the extent he has remained a void he comes off as creepy, to the extent he filled in the blank he's diverged from the ideal image folks produced. Thus both action and inaction are losses for him.

The conservatives and Republicans no longer own the anti-Obama movement. They have to share ownership with disenchanted liberals, those who recognize incompetence when they see it, and the many who are turned off by the growing perception of corruption in the wake of Solyndra. The bad economy has led to an impression of presidential weakness and inability akin to that which took over the image of Jimmy Carter in the late ’70s. More and more, the opposition to Obama is based on the outcomes of his policies, not on their ideological bias or their liberal intent.

At a news conference, FBI Director Robert Mueller said the convoluted plot, involving monitored international calls, Mexican drug money and an attempt to blow up the ambassador in a Washington restaurant, could have been straight from a Hollywood movie.

U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder alleged that the plot was the work of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, which is the guardian of Iran's 32-year-old revolution, and the Quds force, its covert, operational arm.

"High-up officials in those (Iranian) agencies, which is an integral part of the Iranian government, were responsible for this plot," Holder told the news conference.

"I think one has to be concerned about the chilling nature of what the Iranian government attempted to do here," he said.

Defending his administration's failed loan to now-bankrupt Solyndra, President Obama claimed last week that the Department of Energy's loan guarantee program was designed by Democrats in Congress to "take bets" with taxpayer money, a role he evidently favors for the federal government.

◼ Tonight 8:00 PM ET (5:00 PM PT) - Bloomberg
(Note: Conflicting times have been reported, both 7 and 8pm, ET. It appears 8 PM is correct, though the 7 PM time appears on some Bloomberg articles)

Bloomberg Television and The Washington Post, in partnership with WBIN-TV and host Dartmouth College, will present the first debate of the 2012 campaign focused exclusively on the issues voters consider most important - the economy, debt, deficits, taxes, trade and jobs. Moderated by Charlie Rose, The Washington Post political correspondent Karen Tumulty and Bloomberg White House correspondent Julianna Goldman. Be a part of the Bloomberg debate conversation on Twitter #EconDebate and on Facebook at http://facebook.com/bloombergtelevision.

"It's nothing but a rehash of the same failed ideas he's already tried, combined with a huge tax increase," Thune said. "This is a cynical political ploy that's designed not to create jobs for struggling Americans, but to save the president's own job."

"I think that it is perhaps the biggest mistake that Governor Brown has ever made...other than unionizing public employees," Donnelly, a former Minuteman Corps of California leader, told The Bee over the weekend.

Once cleared for circulation, Donnelly will have less than three months to collect the roughly 505,000 valid voter signatures needed to put the referendum on the 2012 ballot. Qualifying would freeze implementation of the A.B. 131, which is not set to take effect until 2013, until voters decide whether to keep or reject the law.

Herman Cain, a one-time pizza magnate and tea party conservative, is surging in GOP polls, partly because of his unabashed criticism of the Wall Street protests.

Although the protests left many GOP contenders tongue-tied at first as they tried to gauge which way the wind was blowing, Cain didn't hesitate in condemning the incipient protests as an attack on American capitalism.

He accused the anti-Wall Street protesters of being jealous of other people's money and turning themselves into victims.

"Part of it is jealousy. I stand by that," Cain said on the CBS program "Face the Nation" Sunday. "And here's why I don't have a lot of patience for that: My parents, they never played the victim card. My parents never said that we hope the rich people lose something so that we can get something.

When Obama accuses Republicans of standing in the way of his nearly $450 billion plan, he ignores the fact that his own party has struggled to unite behind the proposal.

When the president says Republicans haven't explained what they oppose in the plan, he skips over the fact that Republicans who control the House actually have done that in detail.

And when he calls on Congress to "pass this bill now," he slides past the point that Democrats control the Senate and were never prepared to move immediately, given other priorities. Senators are expected to vote Tuesday on opening debate on the bill, a month after the president unveiled it with a call for its immediate passage.

A new poll by the Institute of Politics (IOP) at Harvard University and the New Hampshire Institute of Politics at Saint Anselm College shows former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney leading the candidate field with 38 percent among likely voters in the New Hampshire Republican presidential primary. Businessman Herman Cain (20%) and U.S. Representative Ron Paul (13%) follow, with all remaining candidates polling at 5 percent or less…

The gist is this: President Obama has become a lone wolf, a stranger to his own government. He talks mostly, and sometimes only, to friend and adviser Valerie Jarrett and to David Axelrod, his political strategist.

...If the reports are accurate, and I believe they are, they paint a picture of an isolated man trapped in a collapsing presidency. While there is no indication Obama is walking the halls of the White House late at night, talking to the portraits of former presidents, as Richard Nixon did during Watergate, the reports help explain his odd public remarks.... Read The rest

But it's worth taking note of what he has squandered. In 2008, Obama won 53 percent of the popular vote. That may not sound like a landslide, but it's more than any other Democratic presidential nominee in history except Andrew Jackson, Franklin Roosevelt and Lyndon Johnson.

...Obama's 2008 coalition included two-thirds of young voters and Latinos, majorities of those earning more than $200,000 and those earning less than $50,000, non-college whites in the upper Midwest, and 95 percent of blacks nationwide. Some obvious tensions there.

Now his strategists feel obliged to pick which groups he'll concentrate on to get back up to 50 percent. What's interesting is that his demographic strategists and his issue strategists seem to be eyeing different groups.

...not enough to reassemble the 53 percent coalition that hoped he would bring change for the better. That coalition, historically unusual, seems now to be part of history itself.

"At first blush, I was inclined to sign this bill because it certainly seems inappropriate to shackle a pregnant inmate unless absolutely necessary," Brown said in a veto message. "However, the language of this measure goes too far, prohibiting not only shackling, but also the use of handcuffs or restraints of any kind except under ill-defined circumstances."

Welcome

Hi, I'm John Schutt, chairman of the Humboldt County Republican Central Committee: Want to get involved? We need republicans for open spots on the central committee, committee seats, letters to the editor writers, and more. Send me your thoughts and ideas on making Humboldt great again. Please feel free to call the office (442-2259) or leave a message here (or on Facebook) and I will get back to you as soon as possible.